It was certain, then, that the Philippines would be retained, unless the President and his Commissioners so construed their duty to protect their country's interests as to throw away, in advance of popular instruction, all possible chance of indemnity for the war. But there was an issue of Spanish bonds, called a Philippine loan, amounting to forty million dollars Mexican, or say a little less than twenty millions of American money. Warned by the results of inquiry as to the origin of the Cuban debt, the American Commissioners avoided undertaking to assume this en bloc. But in their first statement of the claim for cession of sovereignty in the Philippines, while intimating their belief in their absolute right to enforce the demand on the single ground of indemnity, they were careful to say that they were ready to stipulate "for the assumption of any existing indebtedness of Spain incurred for public works and improvements of a pacific character in the Philippines." When they learned that this entire "Philippine debt" had only been issued in 1897, that apparently a fourth had been transferred to Cuba to carry on the war against the Cuban insurgents, and finally against the United States, and that much of what was left of the remainder, after satisfying the demands of officials for "costs of negotiation," must have gone to the support of the government while engaged in prosecuting the war against the natives in Luzon, the American Commissioners abandoned the idea of assuming it. But even then they resolved, in the final transfer, to fix an amount at least equal to the face value of that debt, which could be given to Spain. She could use it to pay the Philippine bonds if she chose. Nothing further was said to Spain about the Philippine debt, and no specific reason for the payment was given in the ultimatum. The Commissioners merely observed that they "now present a new proposition, embodying the concessions which, for the sake of immediate peace, their Government is, under the circumstances, willing to tender." What had gone before showed plainly enough the American view as to the sanctity of public debt legitimately incurred in behalf of ceded territory, and explained the money payment in the case of the Philippines, as well as the precise amount at which it was finally fixed. [Sidenote: Privateering.] Neither the Peace of Paris nor the conflict which it closed can be said to have quite settled the status of private war at sea. "Privateering is and remains abolished," not in International Law, but merely between the Powers that signed that clause in the Declaration of Paris in 1856. But the greatest commercial nation, as well as the most powerful, that withheld its signature was the United States. Obviously its adhesion to the principle would bring more weight to the general acceptance among civilized nations, which is the essential for admission in International Law, than that of all the other dissenting nations.